“I enjoy working with directors who realize how important sound can be to their audience’s ultimate experience in the theater. When a director feels the same joy as I do from a creative sound choice that works well, I know I’ve done my job…and that’s the ultimate satisfaction.”

Shortly after graduating from UCLA’s Film School, Benavente began working as an assistant sound editor in television. His first big screen credit arrived in 1984 via the raucous comedy D.C. Cab. He longed to work on feature films, and was fortunate enough to be hired by preeminent sound supervisors Mark Mangini, Stephen Flick, and Richard Anderson as their assistant. Benavente learned the craft and quickly rose through the ranks. In 1998, he received his first Supervising Sound Editor credits on the Fox releases Doctor Dolittle and There’s Something About Mary.

Benavente has supervised the sound on over 50 films, working with such diverse filmmakers as Phillip Noyce, Paul Verhoeven, Richard Linklater, Betty Thomas, Albert Brooks, Bennett Miller, Zach Braff, and Ivan Reitman. He is also highly regarded as one of the best Dialogue & ADR Supervisors in the industry. In 2015, he was awarded the Emmy for Best Sound Editing for a Movie for Television for the History Channel’s “Houdini.”